‘Leon!’ yells Lucius. ‘Stanly! Lauren! Many more like that and we’ll be in trouble. Be ready to use your powers to stabilise this building, we don’t want it falling down around our ears.’
I’m about to say that that’s a good idea when an awfully familiar noise, a thousand times louder than anything else we’ve been hearing, swamps everything, drowning the sounds of gunfire outside, wiping out the lightning. It seems to be coming from everywhere. It’s the roar that I heard in the Tube station, the worst of all the cries of those furious rampaging entities, full of the promise of pain, the whimpering of the dying, the burning of worlds. Seeing the face of whatever could make a sound like that . . . surely that really would drive you mad. I look through one of the glassless windows. Somewhere north, a series of fireballs whoosh upwards into the infernal sky.
It’s out.
It’s here.
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘WHAT THE HELL was that?’ yells a voice. It’s familiar, although I’m sure it’s not someone I’ve met, and I look to the source. One of the suited men standing with Smith.
Well bloody ’eck.
It’s the Lord Mayor of London himself. Derek something. Derek Brook? Brooks? I think it’s Brooks. Short and portly, balding, posh. Smith is on a walkie talkie, barking questions. I run over. ‘Any idea what that was?’ I ask, even though I really don’t want to know.
Smith holds up the walkie talkie. Through the static we can hear a cacophonous crashing, and beneath that a terrified voice. Most of what they’re saying is obscured by stabs of interference, the reports of guns and that infernal thumping and banging, but I manage to make out the word ‘big’.
And the word ‘tentacles’.
Then the radio is silent.
‘Well,’ says Smith. ‘Shit.’
‘Shit indeed!’ Brooks yells. ‘And may I ask why the hell this terrorist isn’t rotting in a cell somewhere?’
Hold on a second there, pal, are you referring to me?
‘Change of plan,’ says Smith. ‘Now, we—’
‘Not good enough!’ the mayor blusters. ‘The prime minister entrusted you with this, Smith! You assured us that the infestation was under control, and that everything would be back to normal! I’d call this pretty bloody far from normal! And why is this terrorist not—’
‘I’m not a terrorist, sir,’ I say. ‘I’m here to help.’
‘Oh, you are, are you?’ The mayor rounds on me. ‘Here to help, are you? So it wasn’t you and your band of terrorist friends who caused this in the first place, was it? Who destroyed our defences and allowed these unholy abominations to broach our city, to destroy this, the cradle of English civilisation, culture, finance? To defile this great symbol of democracy?’ Smith rolls his eyes and moves away, talking into his walkie talkie, obviously pleased that someone has distracted the mayor, and I’m just about to open a six-pack of verbal whoop-ass on the Right Honourable Mr Brooks when something catches my eye. The wall behind him is sweating. Clear droplets of liquid are running down it, and it starts rippling. I step back without thinking and the wall expands outwards, becoming a great black mouth . . . and swallows the mayor whole, mid-sentence. Just like that, he disappears, sucked into a blobby distended mass the same colour as the wall. I can hear what sounds like chomping going on within. There is a chorus of screams, of things being dropped, of people saying oh my God and what was that and the mayor, and a bunch of soldiers open fire, but as quickly as it appeared the thing has vanished, becoming flat and dry, a wall again. My skin crawls. It could be anywhere. I look around, up at the ceiling, at the floors, at the other walls. We cannot have this thing on the loose. Smith is talking at me, other people are talking at him, shouting, demanding, but I shut them out and try to listen for it with my mind, reach out, sense it.
Something tickles the back of my brain and I spin on the spot and think STOP just as it lurches down from the ceiling towards me. I grab it with a thought, stop it in its tracks, grip it, keep it gripped as it snaps its not-exactly-jaws, a shifting amorphous grey thing, strong – but not as strong as me – and I feel where it ends and the ceiling begins and I yank, pulling it out of its home and holding it in the air in front of me. It’s struggling for dear life, snapping its not-quite-mouth, trying to make the shapes of fists and blades and tentacles, like sludgy liquid metal desperately searching for a form, and I yell at everyone to fire at it. Happily, they obey. Bullets fly from all sides, tearing into it, and I can feel that they’re hurting it, it doesn’t make a sound but I know it’s in pain, the thrashing becomes more violent, more spasmodic, and the soldiers keep emptying their weapons, and I can feel it giving up, feel it weakening. It’s nearly gone. Nearly . . . nearly . . . dead. Just a mass. A nothingness. I toss it to the floor.
‘Well,’ says Smith. ‘It appears that we’re going to need a new mayor.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Morter!’ says Lucius, crossing himself. He sounds as though he’s aged about four decades in one evening. I sympathise. ‘Have some respect!’
‘Don’t get pious with me, Lucius,’ snaps Smith. ‘You hated the blathering, ineffectual Etonian prick as much as I did.’
‘But . . . respect for the dead . . .’
‘Respect my arse. If you really think we’ve got time for respect right now, I’d love to know exactly which apocalypse you’ve been witnessing.’ Smith turns away and strides towards the front door. ‘Right, now. Let’s go and find out what this latest minion of Hell is, shall we?’
‘Smith,’ I say.
‘What?’ He clearly doesn’t want to speak to me. Tough. ‘Did you have a plan B?’ I ask.
‘What the hell do you mean?’
‘If the drawing areas didn’t work,’ I say. ‘If that . . . for whatever reason . . . didn’t do the job. Did you have another plan?’
Smith frowns, and in that frown I sense a yes, so I cheat. I read his mind. Just enough to know that I was right, that it was a yes, and he must see it in my eyes because his hand goes to his weapon. ‘Stay out of my head,’ he says, ‘or so help me God I will shoot you—’
‘What was it? The plan B? What is it?’
He makes a massive effort not to lamp me one, and motions towards a quiet corner. I follow him. ‘Those creatures,’ he says. ‘The shimmers. They’re the reason that the monsters are coming through. They all come from some . . . some other dimension. We barely know anything about it. Just that the laws of physics, of biology, of everything, are very different from here. With a few exceptions.’
‘Like the power.’
‘Yes,’ says Smith. ‘Whatever it is in the brain chemistry of empowered people that allows them to do what they do, that . . . essence, energy, power, whatever you want to call it, it exists as a . . . an element, for want of a better word, in the other dimension. The shimmers have a bizarre relationship with it, we’ve barely been able to understand it, but as far as we can tell they both feed on it and produce it. And somehow, they found a way through from their world to our world, and they like the power that we have over here. Maybe it’s a different bloody flavour or something. Who knows. But the point is that they want more of it. And their dimension and ours . . . they’re not meant to interact. As you can see.’
‘So? Plan B?’
‘Freeman,’ says Smith, contempt dripping from his tongue as he says the name. ‘He theorised that it might be possible to close the tears from the other side. From the shimmer world. He had a whole strategy, but it relied on us finding a way through to their world. Something that nobody has been able to do. Our best scientists couldn’t even begin to think of a way.’
‘Couldn’t they just do what you were doing at the drawing areas, but . . . in reverse?’
‘Oh,’ says Smith, slapping a hand to his head. ‘Brilliant! Do you have a degree in advanced interdimensional physics? Such a shame you didn’t come on board years ago! Because nobody els
e in the Angel Group thought of that!’
‘All right, Sammy Sarcasm. You could have just said yes, and that it didn’t work.’
‘The point I’m making,’ says Smith, ‘is that effectively there is no plan B. Unless we can miraculously find a way through to the shimmers’ dimension. If you think of a way, please feel free to book a one-way ticket. Now if you’ll excuse me.’ He stalks away and I flip my middle finger at his retreating back. Great. No plan B.
So more monster fighting, then.
Lauren is just heading outside as well. I follow after her and am about to call her name when I hear another familiar voice through the din. It’s Nailah. ‘Let me in!’ she yells. ‘Let me through, I have to—’
‘Lauren!’ I say. ‘Get her! Make sure she doesn’t get shot!’
Lauren pushes her way through the perimeter of soldiers, reappearing a minute later with Nailah in tow. Her clothes are filthy and several vivid bruises stand out on her face. She’s clutching a baseball bat, which is dripping with various shades of goop. Monster blood. ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘You fought your way here with that?’
Now she sees me, and her eyes widen. ‘Stanly! You’re all right! Yeah, I decided to Resident Evil my way here. It’s fucking mental out there.’ In the distance there is another earth-shaking, sanity-curdling roar.
‘Yeah,’ I say, trying a smile to see how it feels. ‘Shit got real.’
We bring her in and sit her down on a sofa in the corner of the lobby. ‘After it all went tits up, we ran,’ says Nailah. ‘Me and Eddie . . . Lauren, I’m so sorry, we didn’t want to leave you, but—’
‘It’s all right.’ Lauren smiles reassuringly.
‘I got separated from the others,’ said Nailah. ‘Ran . . . hid. Tried to track down some of my contacts, Oracle and Weird, Sister types, but they’d all skipped town. Pussies.’ She smiled darkly. ‘So I went looking for Eddie and co again. Found ‘em. More hiding. For ages, just hiding and waiting . . . then everything started going to hell. Properly.’
‘We were misled,’ I say. ‘The machines . . . they were keeping the monsters out. Not letting them in.’
Nailah shakes her head. ‘Well . . . damn. So the evil corporation wasn’t so evil after all.’
‘There are degrees of evil,’ says Lauren.
‘Yeah,’ says Nailah. ‘That’s why I’m here, actually. Decided I might as well try and get what I came for in the first place . . . should have realised I wouldn’t be able to just shout my way in. Stupid plan, really. It’s just that it’s all . . . it’s all got a bit hectic.’ Her eyes are glassy, but I see her steel herself inside, see her suck the tears in. Lock ‘em in a box. Tough broad.
‘I’m sorry about Stephen,’ I say. ‘Your friend at the Angel Group. I heard that they . . .’ It seems slightly distasteful to come out and say ‘that they executed him’, even though that’s what happened, even though that’s exactly the thought I’m putting into her head.
Couldn’t possibly come out and actually say it, though.
Always something to be cowardly about.
‘Thank you.’ She shakes her head fondly. ‘Stephen. Such an idiot.’
‘Do you have family in London?’
‘No.’
‘Good. And look . . . your big data dump idea? Just forget about it. At least for now. It was a good plan, but now . . . now we just need to focus on stopping what’s happening. Somehow.’ As if to illustrate my point, the new faraway arrival roars again, jellifying my spine.
‘What the hell was that?’ whispers Nailah.
‘You don’t want to know.’ I certainly don’t.
‘God,’ says Nailah. ‘This is too much . . . what the hell . . .’ She closes her eyes and brings her breathing under control. ‘Lauren,’ she says. ‘This isn’t . . . this probably isn’t the time. But we might, you know, die. Horribly. So there’s something . . . I wanted to tell you before, but . . . it’s my fault. That your friend Sally’s in that place. It’s my fault.’
Lauren frowns, confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I saw her,’ says Nailah. ‘About a year ago. Using her powers. Completely by accident, but . . . then I followed her. And I saw her doing it again. And I took a picture, and I put it on the blog, and then she disappeared, and I realised . . . it had to be me, it was my fault, the Angel Group must have seen the picture . . . I’m so sorry . . .’
‘So . . . you knew about me? Before you came?’
‘Yes.’
‘But the dog I saved? You didn’t see me?’
Nailah shakes her head. ‘I was bluffing. Just said I’d seen you using your powers, hoping you’d fill in the blanks. And then you did. Lauren, I’m so, so sorry, after she disappeared I swore I’d never scoop anyone else like that, but—’
Lauren puts her arm around her shoulder. ‘It’s fine. It’s all right. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘But—’
‘She volunteered. Sally volunteered.’
Now it’s Nailah’s turn to look confused. ‘She volunteered? But how . . .’
‘I don’t know,’ says Lauren. ‘I haven’t had a chance to talk to her . . . but she did. She volunteered. And I managed to get her out. It’s all right.’
A soldier hurries over to me. ‘Stanly Bird?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Mr Smith wants to see you.’
The soldier leads me outside. Smith is there with Lucius and a group of soldiers, some regular army, some Angel Group special forces. ‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
‘That noise,’ says Smith. ‘The new arrival. It’s in Regent’s Park. Looks as though it tore its way up from under the ground. It’s by far the biggest one we’ve seen so far. I’m mobilising as much force as we can, heading out to destroy it. Some empowered backup wouldn’t go amiss.’
I nod. ‘Fine. I’ll—’
(Stanly!)
I jump. ‘Woah!’
‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ asks Smith.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘My friend Sharon. She’s talking to me . . . wait a second.’ I walk a little way away and think a reply. Sharon? Are you OK?
(We’re about half a mile from the Shard. We had to stop and help some people. Are you there? Can you come and help us?)
I’ll be right there. Hang on.
I turn back to Smith. ‘I need to go and help them.’
‘But—’
‘If I get them,’ I say, ‘that’s three more empowered to help out with this thing. We’ll meet you at Regent’s Park. All right?’
‘Fine.’
I think towards Lauren. Lauren, the others are nearby. I’m going to help them. Smith is heading to tackle that big bugger we just heard.
(Stanly? Hello? Can you hear me?)
Yes, you’re doing it right!
(OK. This is strange. Stanly . . . I don’t think I can. Whatever it is . . . I don’t think I can face fighting it.)
That’s OK. You and Nailah stay here, help out. And I’ll be back. Be careful.
(I will. You too.)
I kick off and fly, bringing up my internal map. I know where Eddie’s place is in relation to here, so I know which direction to go. My ears are full of chaos, a horrifying abstract noise choir of wailing car alarms, explosions, thunder and monstrous, unintelligible war cries, and I can see more monsters: small ones scurrying down alleys, bigger ones climbing up the sides of buildings, blobs and claws and tentacles. Some of the buildings themselves are . . . they’re distorting, some covered in that weird rusty stuff, some bending or collapsing in on themselves . . .
It’s going to get worse.
Shut up.
No time for thoughts like that.
Moment to moment.
That’s the only way.
A flurry of activity catches my eye and I slow my flight to look down. The road belo
w is lined with expensive-looking town houses, and something is lumbering along it. Another monster. It reminds me of those fish that you see in nature documentaries, the ones that live at the very bottom of the sea; its body is a fleshy, transparent pyramid, its internal organs glowing psychedelic colours, every inner process surreally highlighted, it has six giant insect legs and its front is a mess of feelers and eyes. A crowd of people are rushing it with makeshift weapons, and in amongst them, oh God, yes, yes, my heart bursts, because in amongst them I can clearly see Connor and Skank side-by-side, Connor with a pair of handguns and Skank with a shotgun, firing and firing. Skank is keeping a safe distance but Connor runs forwards, plants his feet on the side of a house and runs nimbly up, positioning himself halfway up the second storey so he can get a better angle. Standing secure on the vertical wall as though it’s still pavement, face set, he continues to pump bullets into the monster. It makes a low rumbling noise and lashes out with one of its feelers, sending a guy flying – woops let me yelp ya there – and I psychically catch him before he can brain himself on a car . . .
My mum’s car!
It’s parked just down the road and Eddie, yes Eddie is next to it, wrestling with something that looks like a mish-mash of horse, dragon and overweight woman. He lands a hard kick in its gut and batters it about the face with his fists, and it whinnies in pain but immediately hits him back, a serious wham that looks like it should have taken my cousin’s head off. He stands his ground, though, shrugs it off, spits some blood on the floor and dives in, walloping the thing to the ground. He keeps on hitting it until it’s not moving any more, and I’m about to shout a warning because something else is coming at him, another ghastly misshapen catastrophe of glued-together bits, but Sharon – yes that’s definitely Sharon’s voice yes yes YES – beats me to it, telling him to ‘Get down’, and I want to whoop with joy. Eddie ducks, just as his deformed opponent gets the business end of an uprooted lamppost straight through its distended belly, impaling it against a tree, and Sharon walks into shot, grim-faced, streaked with dirt and multi-coloured blood, a second lamppost rotating above her head. She jerks her head and psychically yanks the other makeshift spear from the dead beast with a noise that makes me think, inexplicably, of a cow being yanked through a gap that’s much too small. ‘Nice shot!’ I yell.
Ace of Spiders Page 36